There Is a River

by Thomas Sugrue

  Edgar shook his head.

  “I don’t know anything about it,” he said. He explained his relationship with Layne.

  “I never knew he took readings for any but sick people,” he said.

  “Well, never mind,” Mohr said. “I’ve had my own engineers go over the mine. You aren’t necessary for a thing like that. But if you can help sick people, I have a little niece over in Williamson, West Virginia, who had an attack of infantile paralysis. She can’t walk yet, and I’d like to see what can be done to speed her recovery. Want to try it?”

  Edgar gave the reading and Mohr became so interested that he offered to buy the contract from Ketchum, Noe, and the squire. When his niece in West Virginia reported that she was progressing, he began to build a hospital in Nortonville, so determined was he to put the readings on a scientific basis. Patients were having trouble getting the treatments outlined by Edgar carried out. They found that where the attention of a medical doctor was prescribed, the doctor almost always refused to have anything to do with the case. Osteopaths were usually willing to give treatments, but only after making their own diagnosis. They treated as the reading suggested so long as it agreed with their own ideas.

  In Hopkinsville it was possible to get cooperation among the various doctors, but most of the patients were not in Hopkinsville, or even near it. Mohr thought that a hospital would solve the problem—at least for those who could afford to come to it. There the readings could be carried out exactly, and the cases could be followed until the readings discharged them.

  While dickering with Ketchum, Noe, and the squire, Mohr went ahead with his plans. By January, 1911, the cellar and foundation of a small hospital building were completed. Then Mohr was badly hurt in a mine accident. Edgar went to Nortonville and gave readings for him, but it was a case for surgery and rest, and Mohr eventually had to go back to his home in Ohio. It took him a long time to recover, and he lost his holdings in Nortonville. The hospital was not completed, the contract stayed in Hopkinsville. When he left Nortonville, Mohr took with him a reading which said that his injuries might sometime cause blindness. In case this occurred, treatment for it was outlined.

  Edgar was beginning to realize, as the days went by and the readings piled up, that Mohr was right. To get the treatments carried out properly it was necessary that cooperation exist between the different schools of medicine, or a place be established where practitioners of differing medical theories could be employed to carry out the suggestions. There was Ketchum, for instance. He was a homeopath. There was Dr. House. He was a medical doctor who had also studied osteopathy. There was Layne, who had completed his education and was now an osteopath, practicing in Georgia. These men all believed in the readings. If they could be brought together at a hospital, what might not be done?

  But there were other necessities: people who knew about treatment by electricity, people who knew massage, people who knew psychiatry, people who knew scientific diet, people who specialized in the nervous system, people who specialized in female disorders. As Edgar looked over the diagnoses and treatments that came out of him day by day he decided that only a medical Jack-of-all-trades would do; and he would have to be master of them all.

  Late in February, Roswell Field, brother of Eugene Field, came to Hopkinsville to do a series of stories about Edgar for Hearst’s Chicago Examiner. Edgar was photographed holding Hugh Lynn on his lap, and lying on the reading table with the squire standing by him and a stenographer seated at a table. The pictures, along with Field’s stories, were sent to all the Hearst newspapers.

  Field described Edgar as he found him in the company office, killing time “in the most approved Kentucky fashion.

  “His appearance was neither conspicuously encouraging nor disappointing. His photograph, which is an admirable one, bears out the impression of a tall, slender young man, with good, honest eyes, sufficiently wide apart, a high forehead, and just the ordinary features.

  “He admitted that he is thirty-three years of age, though he does not look over twenty-five . . .”

  Field listened to the yarns which were already becoming legends in Hopkinsville and sat in on several readings. As a result of his stories, Edgar was invited to visit Chicago as a guest of the Hearst papers. He went, early in March, along with Noe and the squire, and stayed for ten days, meeting people, giving readings, and answering the most preposterous questions he had ever heard. Everyone considered him a freak, and the bellboys charged people five dollars to slip them into the crowded living room of the bridal suite where they could watch the marvel of the age as he talked, smoked, and told tales.

  A few days after returning to Hopkinsville, he again became a father. Gertrude bore her second son, Milton Porter, on March 28th. Edgar was happier than he had ever been before.

  But the baby became ill. He developed whooping cough, and this was succeeded by colitis. Gertrude did not ask for a reading, nor did it occur to Edgar that anything was seriously wrong until the doctors suddenly gave up hope. Then a reading was taken. It was too late; acid had permeated the system. The baby died.

  Edgar was stunned. The reading hadn’t been taken in time, obviously. He and Gertrude had depended on doctors. In their smug way they had relied on the medical profession, while every day Edgar was going to sleep, diagnosing, and prescribing for other people. It had never occurred to him to question whether, in an emergency involving himself, or his child, or Gertrude, he would turn to a reading for help. He had worried about whether to offer his powers to other people and had decided that he should, because so many had been helped by them and so many believed in them. But he had not really answered the question—even during that long night in the studio at Montgomery—of whether he believed in the readings himself. He was a prophet without honor in his own heart.

  He would have quit had he not been under contract and had he not begun to be deeply affected by the stream of letters of thanks which poured into the office. Other people had faith in him; they seemed sure of his powers; they had been helped by the treatments suggested in their readings. They thanked him profusely. Some said they remembered him in their prayers. Was it possible for a man to mean so much to others and so little to himself?

  If only Gertrude believed. If she had faith, he would have faith, too. But she looked at it from the viewpoint of a woman in love. She had not liked Layne. She did not like Ketchum. She feared what the readings might do to Edgar or what he might be tempted to do by reason of them. She said nothing, but she was like a parent with a beautiful daughter, who fears for her child’s virtue because it has become so desirable.

  After the baby died, her health declined. Dr. Jackson told her she had pleurisy, but it hung on through the spring and into the summer. Each night Edgar came home she seemed a little weaker. She was unable to do any housework; she seemed to care little for anything except the company of Hugh Lynn.

  Each day, reading through the transcripts of the readings he had given, Edgar thought of her and felt guilty.

  “Yes, we have the body . . . it has become impoverished, or thin, from conditions existing in the circulation, produced by lack of nutriment in the blood to supply the rebuilding forces in the body . . . until we have a seat of trouble in the left side, at the lower extremity of the lung itself . . .”

  If he could do that for others, why not for Gertrude? If she would only ask!

  July came, and August. One hot morning Dr. Jackson called him into his office.

  “Edgar,” he said, “I’ve known you and Gertrude all your lives. I know you want me to be frank with you about her illness.”

  “Yes, sir,” Edgar said. He sat down weakly.

  “She’s in bad shape. I’ve called you in because there’s nothing more I can do. She has tuberculosis. Her brother died of it; you know that.

  “I’ve had the other doctors look her over. Beazley’s been there along with the others. We’ve talked it over. We
disagree on what it’s coming from, but we agree on what she has.

  “So far as we can see there is no hope. I don’t know how long she will live; perhaps another week.

  “You’ve been doing things for other people. If there’s anything in that monkey business, now is the time to try it. It’s your only hope. We’ve done all we can. You’d better get a reading.”

  Edgar got up and walked out into the street. Somehow he got to the office and telephoned to the Hill. He told Carrie and Mrs. Evans that Dr. Jackson wanted to see them. He met them and waited while they went into Jackson’s office. They came out weeping. Jackson was with them.

  “How soon can you get a reading?” he said.

  “Right away,” Edgar said.

  “Wait a few minutes,” Jackson said. “There are some men I want to be there. We’ll need them if there is anything that can be done.”

  A tuberculosis specialist from Louisville was in town. Jackson brought him to the office, along with Dr. A. Seargeant, a local specialist in the same field. He asked Louis Elgin, the druggist, to come in. Ketchum was there. The squire was the conductor. Dr. Kasey, the Methodist preacher, and Harry Smith, who had married Edgar and Gertrude, heard what was going on and came in.

  When Edgar woke up, the doctors were pacing up and down the room, shaking their heads and muttering. The specialist from Louisville started talking as soon as he saw that Edgar was awake.

  “Your anatomy is fine, fine,” he said. “Your diagnosis is excellent. But your materia medica is rotten.

  “The things you suggest are what we make medicines with. We don’t use them as they are. They won’t make a compound.

  “Heroin, you say, mixed to make a liquid, given in a capsule, and manufacture only three at a time, because after three days the compound will disintegrate. That’s just weird!”

  “These drugs are principles,” Seargeant said. “We don’t use them as they are . . . The diet is the same as the one used at Battle Creek.”

  “It’s the one used generally for all tuberculosis now,” the specialist from Louisville said.

  “It’s tuberculosis all right,” Jackson said. “But even if all these things work, it still won’t help. It’s too late.”

  “I’d like to get a whiff of that keg,” the specialist from Louisville said.

  He smiled at Edgar.

  “You said to put apple brandy in a charred keg and let her inhale the fumes.”

  “It can’t do any harm,” Jackson said, “though I never heard of it before.”

  They argued and discussed, pacing the floor, while Edgar sat, miserable and silent, watching them.

  “Did I say she could get well?” he whispered to the squire. His father nodded. He was waiting for the doctors to leave. When they and the ministers had gone, leaving the squire, Ketchum, Elgin, and Edgar, there was no prescription for the compound containing heroin. The doctors had refused to write it.

  “Will you?” Elgin said to Ketchum. Ketchum hesitated.

  “If you won’t,” Elgin went on, “I’m going to make it up anyhow. I may go to jail, but if Edgar wants it and his wife needs it, I’ll prepare it.”

  “Then I’ll write it,” Ketchum said. His confidence in Edgar returned; he had been temporarily awed by the manner of his distinguished colleagues.

  Jackson told Gertrude he wanted her to do what the reading suggested. She was too weak to resist or care. She could barely raise her head from the pillow. After the first capsule she ceased to have hemorrhages. After the second day her fever disappeared. The fumes of the apple brandy helped the congestion in her lungs. Very slowly she gained strength, falling time and again into relapse.

  They took frequent check readings on her. Edgar watched them anxiously for indications that the tuberculosis was checked. By September the reading reported: “The condition in the body now is quite different from what we have had before . . . from the head, pains along through the body from the second, fifth and sixth dorsals, and from the first and second lumbar . . . tie-ups here, or floating lesions, or lateral lesions, in the muscular and nerve forces which supply the lower end of the lung and the diaphragm . . . in conjunction with the sympathetic nerve of the solar plexus, coming in conjunction with the solar plexus at the end of the stomach . . . we have had, as we had before in the system, a tie-up through the digestive tract . . . a state of impact through the large colon most all the time . . . the faecal matter lying in the body producing irritation through the whole digestive system, leaving the body in a state of collapse, as we have at present . . . allowed this congestion to form in the lung from the air breathed in . . . and bacilli . . . until we have a congestion in the lung . . . choked, or clogged, leaving the air to pass through the right, and upper part of the left . . .

  “. . . it has been somewhat relieved by the application of forces to the exterior . . . and to the blood from the circulation . . . but the condition of the lung, of choking . . . is still in the system because of the faecal matter in the intestine . . . through the circulation of the hepatics there has been produced the temperatures we have in the body . . . a chilling or congestion of the circulation produces the temperature . . . from the condition in the lung . . . that is, the air, not coming in perfect contact with circulation (lack of reoxidization of the blood) produced the condition . . . still, we have some bacilli here in the lung set up in these forces.”

  On November 21st there was a “good deal of difference in the condition in the body now and what we had before. We have some parts better and others not so well. We have some inflammation in the throat and larynx . . . more than we had before . . . less congestion in the lung, though we still have some . . . the eliminating power of the liver is not as good . . . the blood is weaker, thinner, for the lack of hemoglobin in it . . . the troubles we have through the pelvis are aggravated by the condition we find in the parts themselves . . .

  “. . . the congestion is lower in the lung than we have had before . . . a good deal of soreness on the left side of the throat . . . produced by the conditions in the lung and liver . . .

  “. . . we have not stirred up the liver enough to produce the secretions to eliminate and carry off the particles through the dross and through the intestinal tract . . . along the spine manipulation has relieved the muscular forces and conditions through the lungs and cells themselves . . . or the cover of the lungs, the pleura . . .

  “. . . the condition, of course, has been aggravated through taking cold . . . congestion in the chest and head . . . aggravated condition, of course, of the catarrh that existed before in the head . . .”

  Edgar was up all that night, with the doctors. The language of the reading was calm and matter-of-fact, but there was no mistaking the seriousness of the situation. Gertrude had taken cold; she was gradually choking and coughing herself to death. The next morning another reading was taken.

  “We haven’t much change in the body . . . some better through the condition of the throat; not quite so much inflammation . . . more inflammation, though, through the intestinal tract; that is, below the stomach . . . we have a disturbance through the stomach . . . some congestion through the lung . . . a great deal in the bronchials and head, and in the nasal ducts . . . good deal of soreness in the throat and across the diaphragm from coughing . . . cough produced by lack of blood to remove those particles from the body through the proper channels . . . impoverishment of the blood makes it easy to take cold . . .”

  That morning Gertrude could not raise her hand or lift her head from the pillow to take a drink of water. They gave her the little “goose,” the glass with a tube at its end. She smiled wanly at her mother, who was nursing her.

  The readings were followed carefully, but it was slow, uphill work. When they could keep her from taking cold, she improved. By the first of January she was much better.

  “The inflammation we had in the lower part of the lung here,
close to the diaphragm, and the abrasion we had on the diaphragm and pleura below . . . are removed and absorbed into the system itself . . .”

  That night Edgar sat by her bedside, reading to her. She put out her hand and took hold of his. He looked at her. She was smiling.

  “The readings saved me, Edgar,” she said. “Thank you.”

  He looked at the book again, but the page blurred. He sat in silence staring at it, still holding her hand.

  “Thank you,” she said again.

  TWELVE

  The shutter clicked again.

  “That’s all, Mrs. Doolittle,” he said. “I think we’ll get some nice prints from these. I’ll have the proofs in a few days.”

  “You can let Jim know,” she said. “You’ll be seeing him, I expect.”

  He helped her with her coat and escorted her from the studio to the stairway, with Daniel leading the way.

  “Good-bye, Daniel,” he said gravely.

  The boy shook hands with him and turned to help his mother down the stairs. Edgar went into the other office.

  The squire and Ketchum had gone. The stenographer was working on the transcript of the morning reading.

  “They’ve gone to the hotel for lunch,” she told him. “They took the young man with them. I promised to have this ready for them when they return.”

  He looked at his watch. It was after twelve, but he wasn’t hungry. Through the window he could see Mrs. Doolittle and Daniel crossing the street. It had begun to snow again, very lightly. The 12:15 train, bearing Dr. Münsterberg, was pulling out of the station.

  The snow turned into a near blizzard, and next morning Edgar stayed at home, shoveling paths and building a snowman for Hugh Lynn. That night he got out a copy of “Snowbound” and read it to Gertrude and Hugh Lynn. Gertrude was much better, and the next morning, at Hugh Lynn’s insistence, they built a snowman for her, outside her window. They put a hat on it and called it “The Professor.”